Gilad, Eyal, and Naftali

This was my last full week at Michve Alon, so we spent a few hours every day practicing for the finishing ceremony next week. There's a lot of marching, turning, and trying to be in sync without being able to see each other. The setup is split by pleuga, machlaka, then height. So I'm in the last group to enter, but in the front line for the main formation. It will be a really good ceremony, I hope. At the end, MN will take my shoulder tags (the black and red stripes) off, and we'll officially be "graduated."

Machlaka 2, right before leaving on our last Friday

Our last kravi workout was this week, and even though it was really hard it was completely worth it. We felt amazing at the end, but the next morning I woke up with some pains in my ankle and realized I had probably sprained it during the run, but it's already healed. I sat out the workout for the whole pleuga the next day, and one ceremony practice. During that practice, I saw how awesome our pleuga looks. The ceremony is for the whole course, four pleugot, and we are definitely the most in sync with one another. The boys have a harder time with marching to the beat, but some of them just don't care. When the whole course marches in a circle, I saw this guy dancing instead of marching. His samelet came up on his side and tried to get him to stop, but he kept dancing while she was talking to him. By that time, they had gone to the other side of the circle and I didn't see what happened, but when they came around again, there was a whole where he was supposed to be marching. I'm pretty sure she told him to get his act together or sit out, and he chose the latter. There were a couple other girls sitting with me, and we almost peed ourselves, it was so funny!

There are three new pleugot in our neighboring buildings, two of which are for boys going to combat that made aliyah but their Hebrew is fluent. One of the boys there is my friend from my ulpan, who is also now a Lone Soldier on the kibbutz. There are three of us from my ulpan, another one who is working until his draft to Michve Alon next month. It's so much fun having "family" on base, even though we can't really see or talk to each other, except if our free hours before bed align, and even then it's on the phone. 

We also had the opportunity to retake our Hebrew tests, the same ones we had at the Tzav Rishon, to bring up our official scores. Before I went in, MN and MH (my Hebrew teacher, yes, her name starts with H) gave us chocolates and notes to wish us luck. Mine was a bit of a mess, as I misunderstood the directions she had given me when I had to write sentences. I had to redo part of it and at that point, almost everyone had left the room already. The test-giver saw I was having some trouble and was a bit frustrated, so all of a sudden she asks me if I want a cookie. I was confused. All of a sudden, she pulls this grocery bag out of her purse and is offering a package of cookies. I started laughing so hard, but pulled myself together to eat the cookie and finish my test.

If I hadn't mentioned it before, it has been really fun to learn at Michve. With MN, there were tironut classes to learn about guns, gas masks, camouflage, etc. She also taught us Tzionut, which was all about Israeli history and culture. Most days, those were my favorites because she is just an amazing teacher. Her energy would fill up the room and I would just get pulled in, wanting to learn more and more. Of course, there were also Hebrew classes, taught by either MH or MO (MO is the private teacher, for if we need extra help). Some were straight out of the book, which was hard because we are perpetually tired and most of the course we didn't have a working air conditioner in our classroom. Every once in a while we would learn about an Israeli song (usually very modern, but also a lot of Arik Einshtein), which was always fun. we also played some games to strengthen vocabulary or grammar. As the course went on, the mefakdot began to let our tzevet use our phones in class for faster translations of words from texts, which was a big sign of trust, but mostly I just used the hard copy dictionary.

This past week we finished the book, so on Thursday we took our test, and then started another class. We talked about phrases in Hebrew and translated them to our languages. We also listened to some famous songs that were written in our languages and then translated and covered by Israeli artists ("What a Wonderful World"--> "Achla Olam"). We then chose our favorite songs in our language to translate to Hebrew. I translated a Carrie Underwood song ("Cupid's Got a Shotgun"), which was so much fun, but hard to translate the phrases and hunting references. I had pulled up the lyrics on my phone's internet, and was using the dictionary to translate faster. All of a sudden, a call comes in. Now, it was too early for anyone in the States to be calling, my friends in Israel know not to bother calling me during the week, and there was no caller ID (a blocked number). I knew it had to be the army calling, and I knew why. I showed MH the phone, and she let me go out into the hall to answer. It was the army calling me to invite me to my kravi interview on Sunday! I didn't stop smiling for the rest of the day. Tonight I'm traveling to stay with Eliana and Shmu to be at Tel HaShomer early tomorrow morning. I'm so excited, and my mom even told me to call her as soon as I finish, no matter what time of day it is.

The tag of Totchanim

As fun as this week sounds, with all the jokes and silliness and exciting news, it was also incredibly difficult. At the end of practice on Tuesday, the Rasar (high-up that is in charge of ceremonies and such) announced to us that the three teenage boys that had been kidnapped by Hamas 18 days earlier had been found. We started to cheer and clap, but he stopped us. We impatiently waited for him to tell us why we shouldn't be happy. He added that it was their bodies that had been found. It was like a stab to the heart. Many of us cried. We lowered the flag for the day, and were told to separate into chet formations with our machlaka. The kravi girls were pulled aside and told we had our workout that night, in a half hour. I called my mom and told her, which I hope I will never have to do again, but know that this is my new life. In this particular situation, they had stopped showing the World Cup to broadcast the news, and the Rasar was not going to stop our practice to tell us. But I still know that in the future we are among the first to know, which lays the responsibility on us to call our loved ones to make sure they know we are okay. And then the focus shifts to the families that lost their sons, and we all mourn together. We dedicated our last kravi workout to their memory, and pushed harder than we thought possible. In a couple of weeks, we'll be training in our kravi units (hopefully), learning how to protect the people of Israel.

This post is dedicated to the memories of Gilad Shaar, Eyal Yifrah, and Naftali Fraenkel, for the laughs that were stopped too soon. Your families are in the prayers of all the nation of Israel and Jews worldwide.